Growing up in Japan, we always had a rice cooker at home and didn't know any family that didn't have one. When I left my house for college I bought one.

When I moved to the US, I naturally thought, I must have a rice cooker and bought a cheap one.

At one point, our, me and my husband's, rice cooker broke. I looked up how to cook with a pan. To my surprise, rice tasted better when cooked by a pan over the gas stove. We have been without a rice cooker since, for a good 10 years.

I recently read someone in Japan cooked rice for the first time on the stove as he couldn't use electricity because of an earthquake. He said "what the point of rice cooker, if we can cook better without it?"

Well, a rice cooker keeps the rice warm. But, it is not a really necessary device as most of us, Japanese people, believe.

The companies like panasonic and zojirushi, make a lot of money, selling rice cookers to us and many people are employed there. Maybe, this has been the point of rice cooker and the 20th century, growth, growth.

I am not saying it was all bad. Still, I prefer to live in a way that any false belief, a certain product is necessary to do something, is unveiled and make a choice based on that.